Presenting Windows Workflow Foundation

by Andrew, Paul; Conard, James; Woodgate, Scott; Flanders, Jon; Hatoun, George; Hilerio, Israel; Indurkar, Pravin; Pilarinos, Dennis; Willis, Jurgen

• ISBN13: 9780672328480
• ISBN10: 0672328488
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-01
• Publisher: Sams

Summary

Presenting Windows Workflow Foundationis a premium reference that provides information on a key part of WinFX, providing universally accessible and consistent workflow technology for the Windows platform. Windows Workflow Foundation delivers an API as part of WinFX and a workflow designer hosted in Visual Studio 2005. The Windows Workflow Foundation supports development of both sequential and state-based workflow involving both human and system interaction. Sequential workflow is a map of activities that may be in series or parallel. State-based workflow is a state machine where events cause transitions. Rules can be specified that drive decision making in a workflow and can be updated easily at runtime. Workflow can be created as a model and executed inside many host applications including Windows Forms, console applications, or Web applications. Key Scenarios that can be developed with Windows Workflow Foundation include: Document management: The steps involved in the review and approval of shared documents or other content. Line of business application: The processing flow or business logic in an extensible part of the application. Website page flow: The flow of state variables between web pages. IT management: Handling of common systems management processes. Decision making logic: Where complex business logic is well described by a sequential or state diagram. Consumer: A common series of steps for consumer PC usage. Download the source code from the book at www.samspublishing.com

Author Biography

Paul Andrew is the technical product manager for Windows Workflow Foundation James Conard is an architect evangelist with Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism group. James is responsible for driving the early adoption of Windows Workflow Foundation with key ISVs and customers Scott Woodgate is a group product manager responsible for technical product planning and worldwide readiness of BizTalk Server and Windows Workflow Foundation Jon Flanders is an industry-leading author and instructor of in-depth developer training materials at DevelopMentor George Hatoun is a program manager for Workflow in Microsoft Office Israel Hilerio is a program manager in the Windows Workflow Foundation team in charge of forms integration and designer re-hosting Pravin Indurkar is a program manager on the Windows Workflow Foundation team and is responsible for the state machine workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation Dennis Pilarinos is a technical program manager on the Windows Workflow Foundation team Jurgen Willis is a program manager with the Windows Workflow Foundation team

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Workflow, Tomorrow's Application Logic	p. 3
The Wonder of Flowcharts	p. 3
Today's Workflow Scenarios	p. 5
Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation	p. 6
Windows Workflow Foundation Engine Architecture	p. 7
Hosting Layer	p. 8
Runtime Layer	p. 10
Workflow Model Layer	p. 10
Design-time	p. 13
Office 12 Workflow	p. 19
Call to Action: Core Workflow Tenets	p. 20
Summary	p. 22
Developing Your First Workflow	p. 25
Architecture Review	p. 26
What You Need	p. 26
Your First Console Workflow Application	p. 26
Workflow Console Application	p. 27
Adding Input and Output to a Console Application	p. 30
Describing the Existing Console Host	p. 31
Adding the Parameters	p. 32
Windows Forms Application	p. 34
The Windows Forms Application	p. 34
The Sample Solution	p. 36
Inside the Windows Form Class	p. 36
Inside the Workflow Class	p. 38
The Workflow Design	p. 39
More on the Workflow Design	p. 40
Running the Application	p. 42
Summary	p. 43
March Through the Activities	p. 45
Table of Activities	p. 45
Container for Activities	p. 46
Conditions	p. 47
Declarative Condition	p. 47
Control Flow Activities	p. 48
Sequence Activity	p. 48
Parallel Activity	p. 49
IfElse Activity	p. 50
While Activity	p. 50
ConditionedActivityGroup Activity	p. 53
Replicator Activity	p. 54
Delay Activity	p. 54
Workflow Lifetime Activities	p. 55
InvokeWorkflow Activity	p. 55
Suspend Activity	p. 55
Terminate Activity	p. 56
Event Waiting Activities	p. 56
EventDriven Activity	p. 56
Listen Activity	p. 57
Transaction and Exception Activities	p. 58
TransactionalContext Activity	p. 58
Throw Activity	p. 59
ExceptionHandler Activity	p. 60
Compensate Activity	p. 60
Data-Centric Activities	p. 62
Web Services Activities	p. 62
The Code Activity	p. 63
State Workflow Activities	p. 63
State Activity	p. 63
StateInitialization Activity	p. 64
SetState Activity	p. 64
Custom Activities	p. 64
InvokeMethod Activity in Communications Library	p. 64
EventSink in Communications Library Activity	p. 64
Composite Activity in Activity Library	p. 65
Coded Activity in Activity Library	p. 65
Summary	p. 65
Workflow in Microsoft Office Systems	p. 67
Key Vision Elements	p. 67
A Workflow Engine for Office	p. 68
Where Humans Meet Workflow-The Office Workflow Experience	p. 68
Workflow Actors	p. 68
Workflow User Experience	p. 70
Out-of-the-Box Office Workflows	p. 82
Windows Workflow Foundation Integration	p. 82
Topology and Persistence	p. 82
Workflow Dehydration Model	p. 83
Event Delivery	p. 84
The Workflow Timer Provider	p. 84
Object Model and Web Services	p. 84
History and Reporting	p. 84
Designing Workflows for Office	p. 85
Workflow Model and Forms Authoring	p. 85
Office Activities	p. 85
Metadata, Packaging, and Deployment	p. 86
Summary	p. 87
Workflow Integration with Data Activities	p. 89
What You Need	p. 89
Workflow Integration with XML Documents at a Glance	p. 89
What Are Data Activities?	p. 90
Why Data Activities?	p. 90
Data Activities Types	p. 91
Data Sources	p. 94
DataSourceService	p. 96
Data Exchanges	p. 97
InfoPath Data Exchange Application	p. 99
Summary	p. 118
Using Web Services	p. 119
Using Web Services with Windows Workflow Foundation	p. 119
Calling a Web Service	p. 119
Calling a Web Service from a Workflow	p. 120
Using Web Services: An Example	p. 121
Sessions	p. 126
Adding the Web Reference Manually	p. 127
Exposing a Workflow via a Web Service	p. 127
Hooking Up the Workflow-generated WebService	p. 132
State Machine Workflows and Web Services	p. 135
Summary	p. 135
Developing Activities	p. 137
Activity Component Model	p. 137
Anatomy of an Activity	p. 138
Activity Definition	p. 139
Component References	p. 140
Activity Executor	p. 141
Activity Validator	p. 143
Activity Designer	p. 145
Activity Toolbox Item	p. 152
Summary	p. 152
Advanced Activities and Activity Behaviors	p. 153
Replicator	p. 153
Replicator Overview	p. 154
Replicator Example	p. 154
Additional Replicator Topics	p. 157
Conditioned Activity Group (CAG)	p. 157
CAG Overview	p. 157
CAG Examples	p. 159
Policy	p. 163
Policy Overview	p. 164
Policy Example	p. 164
Additional Policy Topics	p. 168
Advanced Activity Behaviors	p. 171
Transactions	p. 173
Compensation	p. 175
Exception Handling	p. 176
Event Handling	p. 177
Synchronization	p. 177
Activity Behaviors Example	p. 179
Summary	p. 182
Workflow Communications with .NET	p. 183
What You Need	p. 183
Workflow Communications at a Glance	p. 183
Local Communication Services Overview	p. 184
Why Local Services?	p. 184
Data Activities Versus Local Services	p. 185
Local Service Interface	p. 186
Defining Correlation Values	p. 188
WorkflowMessageEventArgs	p. 189
InvokeMethodActivity	p. 190
EventSinkActivity	p. 193
Service Request Form Application	p. 197
Summary	p. 204
State Machine Workflow	p. 205
The Business Process Landscape	p. 205
State Machine Workflows: A New Way of Creating Business Applications	p. 206
Structure of the State Machine Workflows	p. 209
A Simple State Machine Workflow	p. 210
The State Machine Workflow Root Activity	p. 216
The State Activity	p. 217
The Event-Driven Activity in a State Machine Workflow	p. 220
Transitions from One State to Another-The Set State Activity	p. 222
Recursive Composition of State Activities	p. 223
Dynamic Update in State Machine Workflows	p. 225
Skip and Rework Patterns in State Machine Workflows	p. 226
Summary	p. 228
Hosting Workflows in Your Application	p. 229
Runtime Architecture	p. 229
Workflow Runtime APIs	p. 231
Building a Workflow Host	p. 232
Getting Started with the WorkflowRuntime Class	p. 232
Starting Workflows	p. 234
Workflow Lifecycle and Events	p. 236
Controlling Workflow Instances	p. 239
Runtime Services	p. 241
Using Runtime Services	p. 243
Using Persistence with the SqlStatePersistanceService	p. 244
Using the SqlStatePersistenceService	p. 245
Load and Unload Workflow Instances	p. 247
Using Tracking with the SqlTrackingService	p. 248
Using the SqlTrackingService	p. 249
Viewing Workflow Tracking Data	p. 250
Viewing Tracking Data with WorkflowMonitor	p. 251
Tracking Profiles	p. 252
Creating a Custom Runtime Service	p. 257
Developing the Console Tracking Service	p. 258
Testing the Console Tracking Service	p. 263
Summary	p. 264
Dynamic Update of Workflow	p. 265
Modifying a Workflow Instance	p. 266
Modifying a Workflow from the Inside	p. 266
Warning-Existing Activities Not Modifiable	p. 270
Modifying a Workflow from the Outside	p. 272
Controlling Modifiability	p. 275
Planning for Changes-Open-Points	p. 277
Summary	p. 280
Index	p. 281
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

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